No reporter ever did see it. Nor did Lyle-2, whom I caught searching my room for it, although he testily claimed that he’d only been looking for one of his toys. I took it out to my clone-father’s grave and read it through the afternoon. This book is the first time I’ve publicly discussed its contents. I was simply too embarrassed by so much of what I read. On top of that, I thought it would be poor public relations for the ongoing cloning phenomena. The first human cloner was so obsessed with living forever that he married a woman he didn’t love, gave his tacit approval to Lyle’s clandestine plot to control the afterlife, and eventually committed suicide to ensure he was the first clone. This knowledge would only validate the anti-cloners’ propaganda that all cloners were selfish, godless megalomaniacs. I felt clones already had enough to deal with.
Then there were Lily’s feelings to think about. She would learn that my c-father never loved her c-mother, with whom she considered herself contiguous. I wondered whether I was protecting her with my silence or protecting the possibility of my easy marriage to her. On my first day at UCSD, I said goodbye to Lily-2 by giving her our first real kiss. Feeling her eagerness as she pressed herself to me, seeing her eyes filled with joyful tears, was all in contrast to my own internal feelings. Disgust with myself over my insincere kiss. Would I, like my father, marry a woman I didn’t love?
I finished the journal regretting many of the insights I’d learned about my c-father, but I defended him to myself. Yes, the suicide and marrying for power and agreeing to Lyle’s nefarious plot were all terrible. But his neurotic fear of death, born out of early tragedy, was a mitigating factor. His writings indicated that he hoped his next life would be different. He hadn’t foreseen Lily-1’s suicide, and he hoped she would end up with someone who actually loved her. He also liked to think his next marriage would be one of mutual affection. And he looked forward to the day when he’d be in an immortal body, at which point he could end his alliance with Lyle and feel free to live a different life.
And then there was his love for Sarah. As he wrote in his final entry, “I won’t miss this life. The truth is, I’m ashamed of it. I’ve failed as a man. Failed the promise and idealism of my childhood. My only regret is leaving my daughter. She’s the one good thing I’ve given to the world, the one thing my mother would have been proud of. I hope you’ve been a good son, because she deserves that, both for the love she adds to the world and for the life she’s given us. Please always protect and take care of my daughter.”
I placed the journal back into the safe deposit box and left instructions that should I die, no one but my clone would be allowed to open it. I wondered whether I’d have the courage to admit to my future clone in my own journal how I had failed to always protect and take care of Adam-1’s daughter, my mom. I wondered if, somewhere, my clone-father knew this. And what he would say to me if he knew his daughter’s grave was already filled next to his own.
Table of Contents
27
College was the first time I attended non-virtual school since second grade. I got my own apartment near the campus of University of California, San Diego, and found the freedom extremely liberating. Lily could only come over if she got a ride, and Aunt Louise was always courteous enough to call me before she left.
The day I moved in was also the first time since second grade that I’d seen all my mom’s old belongings. I got them out of storage. The dining table and couch that had belonged to my great-grandparents Michael and Sarah, their two portraits that had hung on our wall, the dishes Mom and I always ate off of, and the old family Bible.
My clone-father had described the latter in his description of the small apartment he’d grown up in before his parents’ death. “A huge tome bound in leather that had already been in our family more than half a century, which rested on a stool in our living room. The book’s size and age, and the leather strap that connected the covers with a brass lock, proved to me that its thin, brittle pages contained all the wisdom of the universe.”
I fingered its brass lock and remembered that mom had carried the key on a gold necklace she always wore. The key was nowhere to be found now, but a paperclip proved sufficient. Inside the cover I found a family tree that included births, deaths, and weddings beginning with Michael’s grandparents. I ran my finger over the ink that my ancestors had penned. The information on Michael, Sarah, and my clone-father was written in a woman’s hand I guessed was Great-Grandma Sarah. The rest, including Lily, Mom, and the record of my birth, was filled out in my mom’s handwriting.
I flipped through the first few pages of Genesis from the creation of Adam to their expulsion from Eden. As I turned the page to read about Cain and Abel, there lay The Book of Sarah.
That’s how she had titled it – a series of anecdotes from her life written on loose-leaf stationery. The first one was about my birth.
Being the mother of the first human clone has been my greatest joy. He’s the love of my life. And with every unkind word of every piece of hate mail against my son, I know I’m doing the right thing for him, as well as for my father, for myself, and for all the great people who will one day owe their lives to cloning. It’s given me the opportunity to do something truly important with my life that will make a difference in the world at large, and how many people get such opportunities?
Other entries included moments with her dad: her childhood, the day he came to her apartment to request that she raise his clone, the night of his death. She talked about the day at the park when we first met Gabrielle Burns, and she talked about the stabbing at the beach and the many nightmares it gave her. Nightmares about Gabrielle returning in different situations. And a nightmare about Gabrielle stabbing me to death with her silver knife.
And then there was the last anecdote that I read:
I guess my biggest regret is my relationship with my mother. Dad’s favoritism of me was always awkward for us, and I never really knew how to talk with her about it.
Then there was our other shared relationship. I suspect she went through the same trauma as a child. Maybe talking about it would have brought us closer together. Or maybe it would have completely estranged us, with me blaming her for knowingly leaving me in such a vulnerable situation. The same situation that led to my other regret, never having had a lover and a child with him. But the idea of intimacy still scares me.
I was five years old when it happened. Grandfather Lyle said it was time for bed, and I told him that Dad said I could stay up till 9 o’clock.
“Did you talk back to me?” he asked, jabbing his pipe towards me.
“But Daddy said—”
“I tell your dad what to do, and I tell you what to do,” he said. He grabbed me and threw me on my bed and pulled my pants down like he was going to spank me, but then he started rubbing.
“Do you like that, Sarah?” he asked while I just cried. He took his pipe out of his mouth, and he used that. “Do you like this? You going to do what I say next time?”
When he was done, he said that if I ever said anything, he’d kill my father and me.
I envy people who can put themselves in such a vulnerable position with people. I can’t. Anymore than I could ever possibly expose my clone-daughter to that.
My mind went blank with fury, cursing or screaming or crying as I grabbed a handful of pages from God’s book and ripped them from the binding, then ripped them into smaller and smaller pieces while memories flashed of Mom telling me why she didn’t want to be cloned, of Lyle chiding her for being a virgin mother, and of the gun sitting in the box while he smiled, knowing I’d never use it.
When the rage subsided enough, I closed the Bible and threw it back in the storage box. It would remain buried there for many years.
Table of Contents
28
The following month I registered as a Biotechnology major with a Sociology minor. I hoped sociology would assist me in helping develop social and legal policy regarding clones. But it was in biotech that I was tr
eated as some sort of demigod by my classmates, and not a few professors. Most of the textbooks mentioned my name.
Some of my new best friends wanted an internship at USCS, others were drawn to my peculiar fame, a few wanted to be study partners, but most just found my story intriguing and were curious to meet the first clone. It was the first time I’d ever been popular, and it was all very flattering – even if I was popular for the circumstances of my birth rather than my captivating personality. Instead of taking most of my classes virtually, the usual and less expensive method, I enrolled for the physical rooms.
The fame also helped with the dating scene. I had enjoyed anonymous virtual sex with various avatars over the web. V-sex was already widespread, even for some dating and married couples who enjoyed its safety, guaranteed birth control, and/or its enhancement of stimulation. But I was technically a virgin when I entered college, a status that quickly became a precarious one. All the other clones were still fourteen or younger, so none of my classmates had ever slept with one before. Far be it from me to deprive the curious women of the singular experience.
The mystery of what it was like to sleep with a clone didn’t last long thanks to my first, Suzie Kandel, who was quick to share her experience with a tabloid. She received a handsome fee for the interview and used the attention from her talk show appearances to propel her into a modeling career.
I gained from the experience as well. Not only did I get the big first time out of the way, but I was also warned away from being too promiscuous. The attention from women was welcome, but seeing the consequences splashed all over the news was a turnoff. I grew up having very little respect for myself, but my public image had always been important to me. Not to mention that the publicity did not please Lily. As Lily opened Aunt Louise’s door, the magazine hit my feet.
“What is this shit?”
I looked down to see Suzie and I on the front cover of the tabloid, though I barely recognized us. Lily had slashed the cover repeatedly.
“Do you love me or not?”
“Yes, of course I do,” I said as I forced my eyes up from the hacked-up magazine.
“No you don’t,” she replied, starting to cry. “You don’t want me at all. I should have just stayed dead.”
“Lily, I didn’t sleep with her,” I said, giving her a tentative hug after checking her hands for knives. “That article was just a big lie.”
And in actuality, much of it was. Suzie had given me a much better review than I deserved.
*
I tried to make it up to her the following semester. I took a week off school and we flew to Edinburgh, Scotland. February 14, 2053 was the fiftieth anniversary of Dolly’s death. Lily-2 and I arrived a couple days early to explore the first European city either of us had visited. We meandered through the city’s charming mix of ancient and modern streets, had coffee at the Elephant House café where the recently cloned J.K. Rowling worked on her first Harry Potter book, and walked through the homes of Alexander Graham Bell, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sean Connery. We spent the last day strolling about Edinburgh Castle, which Lily considered to be richly romantic.
On Valentine’s Day, a light snow began to fall. Shannon Smith met us a few miles south of Edinburgh at the Roslin Institute where Dolly was created, and we rode at the head of a funeral procession to Dolly’s shrine. That shrine was an exhibit in the Royal Museum at Edinburgh where Dolly’s stuffed body stood in a clear, protective case that slowly rotated around – though they temporarily stopped the rotation for the ceremony.
I was nervous. I was expected to give a speech during the ceremony. Granted, my audience was only to be a couple hundred people as opposed to the potentially billions of viewers who would have watched the past interviews I’d turned down. But such details did nothing to allay the fear sensors in my brain. Especially when I saw the camera crews setting up near Dolly’s exhibit. It seemed I was going to be seen by billions of people after all.
And so it was that I gave my first major public address. I’d never thought much about Dolly or how her birth had made my own possible. It may seem silly, but when I took my first real look at her, I felt a sense of veneration. I lightly placed my fingertips on the plastic coffin and paused. Lily made fun of me later for hamming it up, but what I felt was genuine.
I tried to capture some of that in my speech, though it was no Gettysburg Address.
Dear friends, scientists, clones, and non-clones,
We gather here today to remember the death half a century ago of Dolly, the first mammal cloned from adult cells.
Some rejoice on this day only because it is the date Dolly died. They believe she ushered in a new and dangerous age wherein humans pretend to be gods. They condemn Sir Ian Wilmut and Dr. Keith Campbell for their blasphemous creations.
I see it differently. I see Wilmut and Campbell using the tools God gave them to bring more life into the world. Dolly lived an abbreviated life, but at least she was able to experience life. Without her, her six children would never have existed at all, nor would their now hundreds of descendants who followed.
Some see Dolly as an evil stain on the earth, but I see her as the vessel through which so many other lives and hopes have poured.
She gave Shannon Smith-2 a chance to live after young Shannon Smith was brutally murdered, and she gave Shannon’s parents another chance to experience the joys of raising a child.
She gave my clone-father hope as death engulfed him.
She gave my beloved mother a child she would never have had.
She gave me every moment of happiness and sadness and wonder.
She gave me life, and gave the same magnificent gift to more than two million people over the past eighteen years.
How do you ever thank someone for that?
Thank you, Dolly.
*
My speech was replayed on the networks and the web, and I received thousands of v-mails and even some handwritten cards and letters from clones around the world. I was greatly moved, and reminded that my activities reflected on all clones – a reminder to live a clean life of which I wouldn’t be ashamed.
The event would have an additional effect on my life, although I wouldn’t realize it for a few years to come. A novelist, one Thomas Wilson, was inspired by the event to write the children’s book Farewell Dolly. Like Animal Farm and Watership Down, it was written from the perspective of the animals, beginning with Dolly’s c-mother and then exploring Dolly’s birth, childhood, relationship with her “husband” David, their daughter Bonnie, and the other five children who would follow, and ending in her death as she battles premature aging. The real Dolly was actually euthanized after contracting lung cancer brought on by a retrovirus, but she also suffered from severe arthritis and surprisingly short telomeres. In the story, her death is followed by her reunion with her c-mother in heaven. Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell figured prominently as well, but they were seen as strange, powerful, god-like creatures to the mystified sheep who could only guess at what the strange sounds they made with their mouths truly meant, usually guessing wrong.
Farewell Dolly was published four years later in 2057, inspiring a young Stephen Sondheim-2 to compose his first original musical based on the novel.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The museum hosted a big dinner after the ceremony. Shannon Smith and I had maintained communication via v-mail for the past few years, but this was the first time we had met physically in fifteen years, since she was a few months old. We had a lot to talk about and even danced together, which made headlines like “It Takes the First Two Clones to Tango.” She was a sweet and intelligent beauty like her c-mother, her thick eyebrows framing sensitive but happy eyes. Lily’s eyes weren’t so happy, her nostrils flared with jealousy. She didn’t want me to be friends with any other women – especially attractive ones with whom I might have a special bond, and especially not on Valentine’s Day.
She scowled at Shannon as we said goodbye. It made
me think of Lily-1 being hurt when my c-father took Sarah and Lily-1 to Edinburgh for the ten-year anniversary of Dolly’s death, and Adam spent all his time fawning over his daughter.
“Do you ever wish we could have cloned Sarah and raised her as our daughter?” I asked as our taxi returned us to the hotel.
She seemed suddenly far away. “Who?”
“Sarah.”
“Oh.” Lily frowned as she began reading a brochure I’d picked up from the Royal Museum. “She didn’t want to be cloned.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to control a surge of anger. “Do you know why?”
She shrugged and shook her head, eyes still glued to the brochure.
“It was because of Lyle.”
She was rigid. Almost a minute passed in silence. “Daddy?”
“Your father molested her when she was five years old.”
“She…” Lily turned a page of the brochure. “She told you that?”
“No. I read it in her diary.”
“Well, I don’t believe that. Those are usually false memories made up later in life.”
I struggled not to lose my temper. I didn’t want to yell at her. “Do you know if Lyle ever molested your c-mother?”
Lily gasped, her eyes attacking mine, jaw almost unhinged. “What? How could you even ask that?”
I placed my hand on her forearm to try to calm her. “My mom thought maybe Grandma Lily had been abused as well. She always regretted not being closer to her mom.”
Lily-2 moved her arm away, tears flowing freely down her face. “Why?” she turned from me, crumpling the brochure in her hand, looking unfocused out the car window. She brushed some tears away. “Why are you telling me all this?”
I shrugged. “I guess I just thought we should talk about it sometime.”
Lily closed her eyes and bowed her head as if in prayer. “Well, Daddy never hurt any of us, and I’ve always loved Sarah.”
I didn’t say anything.